


Closer to Home

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 20:18:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5553899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That pesky Ropen the X-Files video is very inspiring.  Spoilers for season 10 and the possible state of the Mulder/Scully relationship, fantasies of William, Conversation on the Log, things that happen on porches, etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closer to Home

“Call Scully,” Mulder said into his phone, and waited. The phone chimed in reply and the vaguely robotic voice confirmed “calling Scully” as the screen morphed into a control pad. Mulder pressed the speaker phone button and the phone rang twice in his hand.

 

“Scully,” she answered.

 

“Agent Scully, this is Agent Mulder,” he said. “We used to sit next to each other at the FBI, and then we didn’t, but now we do again.”

 

“Funny,” she said, but he could hear the smile in her voice.

 

“Are you busy?” he asked.

 

“Depends on what you want me to do.”

 

“Come out to the house.”

 

“Will it take long?”

 

“No.” Mulder sat down in one his rusted porch chairs and it squeaked under his weight. He could hear Scully licking her lips on the other end of the phone.

 

“And you can’t tell me over the phone?” she asked.

 

“Nope.”

 

“All right. Give me an hour.”

 

Mulder disconnected the call and put his phone in his pocket. He took out a portable radio from his other pocket and unwound the cord for his ear buds. It took some finesse to tune into the baseball game playing on AM radio, but he found the signal and sat back, letting the droll announcers lull him into a meditative state.

 

In the past few weeks, Mulder had done a lot of contemplating. It had been over two years since Scully had lived in this house with him, and though he knew their story wasn’t over, he never expected the next chapter of their lives would look like it had been for the last two months. Back at the FBI for both of them, back to conspiracies and boogeymen and bickering and flirting and frustration and excitement. Factor in new sorrows and old wounds and it had been a long, eye-opening autumn.

 

They were closer than they ever were. Not to any answers in the never-ending search that drove Mulder forward, but as partners and as friends, they were closer now than even ten plus years of loving and living together had brought them. In the back of his mind, Mulder knew that he wasn’t the sole reason that Scully had left, but he was the excuse. That was why he could let her go and remained hopeful that things would work themselves out in the end. They had been through far too much, and worse, to ever be completely severed.

 

Scully had been wrong when she diagnosed Mulder as depressive. He’d laughed at her when she told him her conclusion and it seemed to only reaffirm her opinion. He loved her for her science and knew she was a brilliant doctor, but she would never understand the complexities of behavior. He knew, however, about all the defense mechanisms in the book and about all the combinations of things that motivate a person, including the ones that would cause a brilliant scientist to lash out when shes’s afraid to talk about the son she hadn’t seen in over twelve years.

 

Mulder knew, as sure as he’d known and loved her for over twenty years, that time would bring them back to each other. She had things to work out that he couldn’t help her with, but he wasn’t entirely blameless either. For his part, he’d done his fair share of pushing buttons that shouldn’t have been pushed and she had been right when she once told him it was like he had stopped caring. He had. Not for her, but for the world in general. Somewhere along the way it just didn’t seem to matter to him if the world ended or not and when it didn’t, he didn’t feel much of anything about it except anger at all the pointless sacrifices made. That was why she thought he was depressed. That was when she refused to discuss the choice that had been made twelve years earlier. That was what drove her away on a wet, rainy morning in April.

 

Mulder opened his eyes as the sun poked through the wisps of passing clouds and hit his face. It warmed his cheeks and shoulders and he basked in the rays, sighing in contentment. It had taken him a few weeks to feel this relief. When Scully had finally, truly opened up to him about her fears about their son, the guilt she’d felt for fourteen years, the terrible reality that she could never know if she, if _they_ , had done the right thing, it had come out as a grief-induced, quiet confession that he thought may have almost been accidental. He digested it with caution, unable to share his own pain with her at such a time, when she was so vulnerable and broken-hearted, but he yearned to let her know she wasn’t alone.

 

They hadn’t spoken of it again until, just before leaving the office last night for the weekend, Scully closed her computer and while his back was to her at the filing cabinet, she started speaking to him in the low, quiet murmur of countless nighttime conversations they’d had before falling asleep.

 

“I had a dream about him last night,” she’d said. “It felt so real that I was a little disoriented this morning.”

 

Mulder had turned around to look at her. He stayed by the filing cabinet and she folded her hands in her lap.

 

“He looked like you,” she’d continued. “Kind of.” She’d circled a finger through the air around her face and dropped her hand back to her lap. “Your expression. Your eyes, but blue. My coloring.”

 

“And the nose?” Mulder had asked.

 

“His own.” She’d smiled.

 

“What was he doing? In the dream.”

 

“I was picking him up from school. He was telling me about his day. He had a scout uniform on and a sash on his shoulder full of badges. He wanted me to see one in particular.”

 

“What was it for?”

 

She’d shaken her head then. “I don’t know. He showed it to me, and then we were at home and I was making dinner. I told him to take off his uniform and get washed up and he said, “not before I show Dad,” and then he was gone. I went to look for him and I found him, but I didn’t stop looking. He was in every room of the house, but it was different versions of him. Older and younger, different clothes, different hair cuts. I found him playing ping-pong in the basement and listening to music in his room and doing homework at the dining room table. And…”

 

“And?”

 

“In the back yard, you were there, helping him build a rocket.”

 

“Then what?”

 

Scully had hesitated and then shrugged. “I stopped looking. I woke up. I think I remember him yelling “we’re going to see the stars,” before you lit the fuse, but I woke up before the rocket went up.”

 

The office had gone silent. Scully had looked down at her hands.

 

“Thank you for telling me,” Mulder had said.

 

“You’re welcome.” Scully stood up just then and slipped her blazer on. She’d packed her laptop into her bag and then moved over to the filing cabinet. “Do you resent me for what I did?”

 

“A little,” he’d said, unburdening himself of a decade and a half of weight he’d carried on his shoulders, surprised at how easy it was to say it so simply and honestly. “I thought that if things had been different, if I’d gotten the chance to come home and he wasn’t there, nothing on this Earth would have stopped me from finding him, even you. You couldn’t have known that we’d end up like we did and I hated you just a little for it. He was my son and I wanted that opportunity of being his father. I know that it was the right thing to do, I know we both do, but I’ll always wonder. I can’t help it.”

 

“I know. Good night, Mulder.”

 

“Night, Scully.”

 

Mulder had woken this morning with a renewed sense of longing. He’d turned towards the side of the bed that had been Scully’s and ran his hand over the empty space. The room was too cold. Not for him, but for her. He’d gotten up and turned the heat on to take the chill out of the air. There was a pile of laundry in the basket by the door, so he’d put it in the machine. There was a pile of dishes in the sink, so he’d washed them. A light bulb in the kitchen needed changing, so he’d changed it. He’d pulled the porch chairs out of the storage shed and washed them down, scraping at the rusted bits that had eaten away the paint. When he was through, he’d pulled out his phone.

 

The crunch of rubber on gravel made Mulder open his eyes and he saw Scully’s SUV pulling up the drive. He turned his radio off and wound up the cord of his ear buds, stowing both back in his pocket. Scully slipped out of the car, tossing her sunglasses aside and leaving her keys in the ignition. She walked up the porch and leaned back against the railing across from him.

 

“Well,” she said.

 

“Hey,” he answered.

 

“You have something to show me?”

 

“First, I might have to arrest you.”

 

“For what?”

 

“Looks to me like you’re wearing white after Labor Day, Miss Scully.”

 

Scully looked down at her pants and then raised her brows at Mulder. “I was not aware you’d joined the fashion police as part of your reinstatement with law enforcement, Agent Mulder.”

 

“I took the exam, but fortunately for you, I was never sworn in.”

 

“I’m breathing a sigh of relief as we speak.”

 

“Besides,” Mulder said, pushing up from his chair. “You get off on a technicality.”

 

“What would that be?”

 

“Looking damn good.”

 

Scully chuckled a little and rolled her eyes as Mulder came towards her. He held out his hand to her, which she took with both of her own, tripping towards him as he gave her a tug off the railing.

 

“Where are we going?” Scully asked.

 

“Just a little walk,” Mulder answered, smiling down at her as they headed off the porch.

 

Scully left his hand in hers as they strolled through the overgrown field of grass on the property in front of the house. They walked side by side in silence until Mulder finally stopped and turned towards her. She squinted up at him and moved her free hand up to block the sun, but he caught her wrist and laced their fingers together. He wanted to see her face, unshielded. Casually, he swung their joined hands a little, bringing a smile to her lips.

 

“What are we doing out here?” Scully asked.

 

Mulder shrugged lightly and shook his head with his face to the sun. Their shoulders rose and fell in time. She squeezed his hands and he looked down at her, volleying his gaze from her eyes to her lips. She looked so kissable in that moment that he had to bend his head and touch his mouth to hers, very lightly.

 

“The world didn’t end,” Scully said, her eyes on his mouth as he pulled his head back, but then lifting to his after a few moments.

 

He laughed. “No, it didn’t,” he said.

 

“It’s different, though,” she said, moving her head back, closing her eyes to the sun. “Things have changed.”

 

“I still love you. That will never change.”

 

“Why did you bring me out here?”

 

Mulder lifted their hands and turned Scully around. Both their arms ended up crossed over her body so she was snug in both Mulder’s embrace and her own. He put his chin on her head and swayed softly. The house stared back at them in the distance.

 

“We can’t go back,” Mulder said. “But, we can move on.”

 

“I’d like that.”

 

“That picture you showed me, from when he was a baby, I want you to stop hiding it in a drawer.”

 

Scully turned her head slightly and pressed herself back into Mulder’s chest. He tightened his arms a little and moved his cheek down to her head.

 

“Frame it,” he said. “It should be out in the open.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“That little house up there misses you, Scully. I want you to come home.”

 

“You want me to come home because the house misses me?”

 

“No, I want you to come home because it’s where you want to be.”

 

Scully sighed and rubbed the back of her head against Mulder’s shoulder. He kissed the shell of her ear where he knew it made her knees weak and sure enough, she swayed a little in his arms and he pulled her back. Her head rolled further to the side, exposing her neck, and he put his mouth to the spot just behind her jaw, dragging his bottom lip against her skin. She rolled her head towards him and nuzzled her cheek against his while staring at the little house ahead of them.

 

“What can you give me as incentive?” she asked.

 

“I’ll build you a rocket and take you to the stars,” he whispered in her ear.

 

The End


End file.
